Li-In battery anode materials published in Angewandte Chemie
S. Choudhury, Z. Tu, S. Stalin, D. Vu, K. Fawole, D. Gunceler, R. Sundararaman and L. Archer, “Electroless Formation of Hybrid Lithium Anodes for Fast Interfacial Ion Transport”, Angewandte Chemie, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201707754 (2017)
The Archer group at Cornell investigate hybrid lithium-indium anodes for lithium-ion batteries. They show that coating lithium anodes with indium provides high chemical stability and results in increased battery durability (charge-discharge cycles). Using joint density-functional theory calculations of diffusion barriers, we show that Li ions can diffuse extremely quickly on Indium surfaces compared to other metals, and that the diffusion is substantially faster at an indium-electrolyte interface compared to an indium surface in air/vacuum. This fast diffusion could mitigate dendrite formation in the battery, contributing to the increased durability.